Like Cigarettes and Coffee
by MaxRide05
Summary: After the war Luna goes to see Vernon on Harry's behalf. Harry now owns number four and if Vernon wants to stay he has to comply with his nephew's terms. "Is that a threat?" "Indeed it is, Mr Dursley." She made a mockery of the title whenever it passed her pink lips. How Luna becomes Vernon Dursley's therapist. And he becomes dependent on her. Oneshot. Written for Camp Potter.


**Disclaimer: I don't own HP. Or Emmerdale - I don't even watch it.**

**"You need me like a bad habit. One that leaves you defenseless, dependent, and alone."**

**- Taking Back Sunday, "One-Eighty By Summer"**

It happened two weeks after Petunia left him. That's when _she_ first came to Privet Drive on behalf of his nephew.

At two o'clock on the dot, on a Thursday, the doorbell rang. The cretin ringing it seemed to be playing a terrible rendition of what could have been '_Jingle Bells_'. It was barely June.

When he wrenched open the door, annoyed at being interrupted so unexpectedly during an Emmerdale omnibus, he barely took in the young woman's strange robelike clothing before he blanched in horror.

"No... No, no, no! I'll _not_ have one of you _freaks_ set foot in my house _again!_" He tried to slam the door in her face. _Tried_ being the operative word, as the blonde freak canted her head to the side, unblinkingly watching him with eerie pale eyes. And he got the vague sense that he was being _assessed_ before the door jammed less than halfway from closing.

"Now that wasn't very nice." Vernon nearly mistook her voice for someone else's, someone standing far away, their voice carried to his reddening ears by the wind. Her voice was that airy. "Might I come in, Mr Dursley?" He stayed silent. She came in anyway. He backed up as far as he could in the hallway with his bad leg. Then he straightened, determined to show no fear in the face of this... absurdity.

That was rather ruined by the crack in his voice as he asked the wide eyed woman looking around his hallway with great interest what she wanted.

Walking into the living room, calm as you like, she said, "Sit down, Mr Dursley," like it was her house. The audacity of this creature... He sat anyway, what with his bad leg and all.

She perched on the arm of an armchair and he tried not to wince. _Petunia would have a fit_... Except Petunia wasn't here. He honestly tried not to feel the least bit victorious when thinking of what 'Tunie's reaction to this stranger sitting on the _arm_ of the chair would be.

He didn't succeed.

"Where is your wife, Mr Dursley?" the witch who called herself Luna asked, holding a clipboard and papers in front of her, pen poised to write. Only when he grunted out an answer ("Gone.") she certainly didn't look like she was writing. She looked like she was scribbling. Then, after only two seconds, her long, slender fingers halted.

"I'm here on behalf of Harry Potter."

He nearly told her to get right out, then and there. Only the warning look in her previously calm eyes stopped him. It wasn't his wont to forget what happened the last time a magically inclined person came to his house, right before he and his family had to up sticks for their own safety.

She told him the terms - _Potter's_ terms. He was surprised that he could understand her after she told him Petunia had paid off the mortgage (_with what money?_, he'd wondered).

Potter now owned the house after buying it from his aunt.

And if Vernon wanted to continue living in it he'd do as Potter said (he himself would have come but he was too busy clearing up that mess of a Wizarding World).

Vernon argued against it, as best he could.

Luna regarded him placidly, then she said, "If you do not comply with the terms, you will be without a home as well as without a job," he winced at the reminder of what his bad leg had cost him, "Harry is well within his rights to throw you out of his house."

"Is that a threat?!" he snarled, anger and unease rising within him, making him fight back at the source.

The blonde arched a pale, thin eyebrow, making another mark on her paper even as her eyes remained locked with his. "Indeed it is, Mr Dursley."

He didn't like her calling him that, he decided in that instant. She made a mockery of the title whenever it passed her pink lips.

The moment before he could tell her to get out, she hopped down from her seat. "I'll leave you to consider. But consider wisely, Mr Dursley. I'll see myself out." _Like she hadn't seen herself in._

She came back two days later. He'd been waiting, almost jumping at every sound that reached his ears, and even some he may have imagined.

He accepted the terms, and when he was deemed '_ready_' would meet with Potter himself. Luna beamed widely when he accepted, and said, "You won't regret this, Vernon Dursley." He was so focused on her saying, '_Vernon Dursley_', as Petunia had in their courting days, that he paid little attention to the smirk on her face.

That was how Luna became, for all intents and purposes, his therapist.

She came every two days, at two on the dot and eventually he became so used to her that he stopped clearing away the coffee cups cluttering the - _funnily enough_ - coffee table. Petunia would have done her nut; she'd never let him do that, he always had to clear up after himself.

Sometimes he even lay on the sofa as Luna, on what he came to think of as _her chair_, 'took notes' in that decidedly odd scribbling way of hers. The first time he'd done it she'd laughed, saying it was so stereotypical of their roles mugglewise. He'd nodded dumbly, taking in the strange feeling in his stomach that he'd gotten at her laugh.

He thought it to be indigestion, but it didn't stop him feeling pleasure at making her laugh.

Two months in, Luna tried to make him give up smoking. She had grass stains on her blessedly 'Muggle' trousers (she'd been chasing Snorffales, she said, in the park. He had no idea what they were and knew better than to ask), and her hair smelt of grass as she leaned across him to take away the cigarette (_much cheaper than cigars_) from his pudgy fingers.

In that instant he wished he was a decade or so younger, just so... He didn't finish that thought. Found that he couldn't, actually. Even so, he still didn't meet Luna's eyes for the rest of that '_session_'. She took to calling them '_visits_' some weeks in The Beginning, but he knew them for what they were. After all, if it looks like a mangy mutt, sounds like a mangy mutt - it's a mangy bleedin' mutt.

Fours month in, he met Hermione Granger, she was... checking up on them, she said. This witch had her hair scraped back from her forehead, clasped at the back with a grotesque looking clip that was nearly eaten by the explosion of bushy brown curls. It was a strange parody of a bun one of the witches who used to visit him and Petunia had favoured - some _Mc-something_.

Vernon preferred Luna's flowing blonde locks; they didn't look as severe, especially not with Luna's face.

Luna smiled happily at this Hermione, asking if Ron liked her new look, which reminded the grey eyed young woman of someone called, "McGonagall." He thought he recognised the name.

Hermione just sniffed and kept looking at her papers. Her voice was cool and professional as she inquired about their progress. Vernon didn't much like the way she said it; it made him sound like one of Marge's bred show dogs in a pageant.

Luna said he was doing well, that they'd come far, smiling at him all the while. He was sure his ears were turning red before she looked back at Hermione.

The brown haired witch nodded coolly, looking at Vernon with barely disguised disdain. That was new; in the beginning Luna had looked at him with an assessing eye but never a shrewd one. He wasn't sure what to make of it so he just kept eye contact until Hermione sniffed again and looked away.

He was terribly wanting to ask if she had a cold before Luna beat him to it - in her own way.

"Have the snuffle wohgers been bothering you again, Hermione?"

The older witch looked like she was stopping herself from rolling her eyes, but only just. Vernon felt his face redden as he looked at Luna to see her reaction. She looked unperturbed - as she usually did during the visits, even when he'd had a bad day and swore enough to make a sailor blush.

And she'd said this Hermione was a close friend of hers. She seemed to treat any and every word that came out of Luna's mouth the way she treated Vernon in general.

He really was glad when she left, even if it was with a loud _crack!_ and right in the middle of his dining room.

Vernon actually _shuddered_ to think of how things would have been had _Hermione_, or for that matter any other witch, come to him on his nephew's behalf. He appreciated Luna more after that.

Five months in, Luna upped his weekly walks to the shops, then back, to weekly jogs.

She always shouted encouragement at him, even now. His leg was getting better by the day and he didn't have as much trouble breathing since he'd cut down on smoking. He'd cut down on coffee too. (Luna tended to say that a healthy mind was a happy one; he was inclined to agree.) He had something much better than cigarettes and coffee now.

He would never admit it but he liked the look of Luna in a tracksuit. When it was cold she even wore leg warmers. After seeing Luna in her jogging outfit for the first few weeks of the new regime he suggested they start jogging two days a week.

Luna asked if he was sure, and when he said yes, her smile brightened and she told him it was a brilliant idea. He started to think of more brilliant ideas after that.

Six and a half months in was when he was sure he needed her in a way he'd never needed Petunia. It had been creeping up on him all this time, but the moment he truly realised was when she arrived an hour later.

He nearly exploded. He'd been so worried, stupidly so as he knew, deep down, she could take care of herself. But the anxiety still filled him slowly until he overflowed with it.

Her cheeks were flushed. That was one of the first things he registered after calming down. He dismissed it as the wind outside even though he couldn't hear it or see any trees wavering outside. They always did, even in a light breeze.

The second thing he noted was the expression on her face. In a subtle sort of way it was quite different from her usual content one, yet it took him a while to place it. When he did he was glad he was sitting down because if he hadn't he might have fainted.

Luna had a crush. And from the slight grin on her face she didn't seem to know it, or at least not as it truly was. Knowing her she probably thought she'd just gotten a best friend for the first time in her life. It made him feel queasy.

She wasn't very self aware, even at the best of times. When she finally spoke to him after staring into the proverbial middle distance for a while, her voice was breathier then usual. It was as if she'd just run a marathon; her cheeks were still even a dusty pink.

Vernon wondered if her heart was racing, like his? Though obviously for a very different reason.

She told him that she'd met up with an old friend, that she'd had the 'most wonderful time', and that he'd like to see her again soon. If she deigned to start giggling like a schoolgirl (she was far from that, in her early twenties) Vernon didn't know what he'd do.

It was business as usual after that. Luna did trail off when she was speaking a few times, though, and she still took to staring off into the distance, biting down a grin.

Vernon _hated_ to admit it, but he was jealous.

It wasn't helped when the very next day Luna popped in, quite literally in the living room. He didn't have time to ask what she was doing here (even as his traitorously twisted stomach eased at the sight of her) before she was on him, figuratively of course, babbling about seeing her friend later on.

His stomach dropped as he listened to her; he hadn't realised that was today. And she'd come to him, _why_?

He nearly asked her that before she held up a hand and transformed (_transfigured_?) her casual outfit to a flowing, knee length, tie-dye dress that hugged her curves. Her trainers were now sandals that laced up to her knees, and a light scarf held her curls of long blonde hair up and back from her narrow face.

Aside from flinching at the show of magic Vernon did nothing, even when she prompted him with a hopeful, "Do I look nice?".

She looked radiant.

But that wasn't the point.

"Who is he? This bloke?" His voice was infused with a cool politeness that he didn't feel. If anything he wanted to find this bloke and rip his head from his shoulders.

Luna smiled, unaffected by his mood. "His name is Charlie."

_Oh, _Charlie_, was it?_ Vernon could just imagine him now, thick blonde - _no_, auburn (blonde was too much like Luna, black and brown too common) hair alight in the sunlight. A rugged man with two day old stubble on his jaw. A long, lean body. 'Abs' firm and tight.

Good upper body strength for sure, with bulging biceps. Hands that were large, with long fingers.

And lastly, eyes that a girl could drown in.

Vernon hadn't struggled to breathe so much since he'd finally cut down to one smoke a week.

Luna's next words didn't help at all. "He works with dragons in Romania."

"Oh that's just _brilliant_!" Vernon snarled. "_Bloody_ brilliant! Well, go on then - off to your exotic boyfriend! Go run off and have his absurdly muscular children. Sons and daughters galore!" With her glorious mane of blonde tresses and his beautiful eyes.

Luna looked almost hurt.

"Go!"

She left. Despite that being what he'd told her to do, that hurt more than anything.

Vernon hardly ever shouted at her, these days. The last time he could remember doing so, it must have been in The Beginning - about two weeks into their sessions. She'd started to talk about his family.

He'd remained stoically silent when she'd talked of Dudley choosing not to come back to Surrey with his parents.

But then she talked about Petunia. ("Left you for a squib, correct?" He'd known the term for magically inept, even then. "That must have been terrible. It seems she was never quite able to stay away from magic, even if her toy boy paramour didn't have it.") And he lost it.

Vernon screamed at the pale witch with wild, long hair and too-large eyes until his throat was raw and his words came out rasps.

His only regrets then had been about his aching throat and the fact that she hadn't gone away after.

His regrets now were that he'd spoken at all, and that she'd been so hurt she left.

The session following that incident was tense. For Vernon anyway. Luna was infallibly polite, almost to the point of coldness. But had Vernon bothered to pay attention to anything but his own regrets he would have noticed that Luna made as much effort to hold his gaze as he did hers. Which was to say, very little at all.

He would never tell her that he needed her, like he'd needed cigarettes and coffee, but before she left she gave him a look that made him shiver.

_It's as if she knows._ With no words spoken between them, she was already aware of his feelings. Perhaps she'd always known.

"It won't be long now, Vernon." She didn't look at him as she said it, but she smiled, all the same.

A fortnight later, Vernon didn't know it but it was to be the last time he ever saw Luna.

Upon arriving, punctual as ever, she drew him into the kitchen, kicking the door shut behind her.

Vernon paid that little mind when the corner of her mouth quirked up slightly as she handed him a white sheet of crinkled paper.

A shiver crawled up his spine as soon as he took it from her. If he hadn't known better he'd have said it was magic.

It was a picture. The realisation that this was what she had been hiding from him during sessions, holding to her chest whenever he tried to sneak a look, was diminished by the actual drawing.

She'd drawn it in both pencil and pen. It didn't move - which he was quite thankful for - and had been drawn onto muggle paper.

It was also of himself.

It was ghastly.

"Do you like it?" She asked. Her large eyes saw too much sometimes. He couldn't meet them with his own as he scrambled for words. The right words.

"It's very... abstract."

Luna smiled prettily. "It's how I saw you, before and during the sessions we've had." Her smile widened to an absolute beam, showing a flash of white teeth. "And now you've changed."

He flushed, stammering his newfound modesty as he thanked her.

Then his stomach twisted slightly as her grin became muted, almost slightly sinister. She said, "He's all yours, Harry."

And Vernon swore his heart stopped. For there, in the kitchen doorway stood his nephew. His bright green eyes were locked with the older man's as he held the kitchen door open. "Thank you, Luna."

Right before she passed through the doorway Luna turned to Vernon. "Remember what we talked about in the sessions, Vernon Dursley, and you may just keep your house." He got the feeling she'd been about to say something other than 'house'. Something a lot more than a mere roof over his head.

He widened his eyes, trying to plead with her wordlessly. He wasn't ready. Not for this... Even if he lived to a hundred like that old coot Dumbledore, Vernon didn't think he'd ever be ready.

But he was only prolonging the inevitable. She was a friend of the b- _Harry's_, she would never take Vernon's side over his, no matter what they'd gone through over the past seven months. Almost a year, he realised, when Luna left with a distant smile and a fluid nod.

Finding his body rigid and ramrod straight with terror, Vernon turned his head to look upon his nephew, who was bigger than he'd been the last time they saw each other. Vernon's throat was tight with fear as he drew in a shaky breath.

_It was time to face the music._

**A/N: the end. Because this wasn't supposed to have a plot. Having Luna pose as Vernon's therapist was the only plausible way I could see them regularly meeting.**

**Written for Camp Potter Obstacle Course (crack pairings), Week one. I chose Vernon/Luna as a mandatory pairing. **

**Optional Prompts used: 1. "Go on just say it. You need me like a bad habit. One that leaves you defenseless, dependent, and alone."- Taking Back Sunday, "One-Eighty By Summer" 4. Grass stains 5. Cigarettes and coffee **


End file.
